In re­sponse to con­cerns raised by Op­po­si­tion par­ties about its pi­lot project for par­al­lel da­ta col­lec­tion at polling sta­tions dur­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions to­mor­row, the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) has de­cid­ed to post­pone im­ple­ment­ing the project.

The fol­low­ing is the of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued by the EBC on the mat­ter…

(EBC) — The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the me­dia and po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the up­com­ing To­ba­go House As­sem­bly Elec­tions on Sat­ur­day De­cem­ber 4th 2021 and sub­se­quent­ly agreed that it will not move for­ward with its pi­lot project for par­al­lel da­ta col­lec­tion at polling sta­tions in the spec­i­fied elec­toral dis­tricts of Scar­bor­ough/Mt. Grace and Mt. St. George/Good­wood on Elec­tion Day, Mon­day 6th De­cem­ber, 2021. The Com­mis­sion lis­tened to all rel­e­vant par­ties and de­cid­ed to de­fer for fu­ture elec­tions af­ter there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion.

Po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the me­dia were in­vit­ed to ses­sions, to wit­ness the demon­stra­tion of this project, which showed the si­mul­ta­ne­ous col­lec­tion of da­ta uti­liz­ing a tech­nol­o­gy process with­in a mock polling sta­tion. This high­light­ed how the tech­nol­o­gy would work in tan­dem with the ex­ist­ing man­u­al process and that there would be no change in that man­u­al process.  The Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots, how­ev­er, de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the demon­stra­tion and main­tained their ob­jec­tion to this ini­tia­tive. In light of this ob­jec­tion and as the EBC re­mains a com­mit­ted part­ner to our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, the Com­mis­sion de­cid­ed to de­fer the in­tro­duc­tion of this ini­tia­tive.

The Com­mis­sion rec­og­nizes that this ini­tia­tive, though lim­it­ed to two elec­toral dis­tricts in the first in­stance, could have pro­vid­ed more time­ly da­ta to stake­hold­ers and po­ten­tial­ly could have in­formed plans for im­proved ser­vice to the elec­torate. It is note­wor­thy that this col­lec­tion of da­ta uti­liz­ing tech­nol­o­gy, in ad­di­tion to the man­u­al process is cur­rent­ly be­ing used suc­cess­ful­ly in the Caribbean and oth­er over­seas ju­ris­dic­tions.

As the EBC pre­pares for the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions in 2022, it will take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with all stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the ad­van­tages of this ini­tia­tive.